Mathew Reuther loves storytelling in games. It should not have surprised me in the least that the biggest point he made after playing with the demo of Disco Candybar’s combat system was not about the game mechanics, but about the impact the story would eventually have.

I met Mathew probably around 2019, while I was working with his wife Bridgette at The Op Games. She’s brilliant and awesome too, and I eventually want to get her opinion on the game engine (if we can arrange that), but Mathew was part of my immediate circle of “garage Magic players”, along with the Crowells of the previous TILT post. Getting to play Disco Candybar with him was more than an opportunity to get feedback from another role playing game expert, it was a chance to hang out with a friend I don’t see often enough anymore.

Pause… Clarification.

To say Mathew knows role playing games and combat systems is an understatement. He was the designer behind much of the Quests of Yore – Barley’s Edition RPG put out by The Op a few years ago. I’ve listed that game as one that influenced this project in a previous post, so it made a lot of sense to ask for his feedback, notes, and advice.

I gave Mathew the standard intro: the goals of making a long-form adventure game my 10-year-old could play and teach others, clarity and accessibility, short-burst combat sequences interspersed with story. This clicked for him right away, as his kids aren’t much older than mine, and he’s been gaming with them for around a decade. He knew the assignment I’d given myself.

Diving headfirst into the gameplay, he saw the “gears” behind the enemy and AI very quickly, maybe more than anyone else so far. He noticed details and possible mechanical interactions that I usually saved for the end of the demo. Mathew validated for me that there was something interesting, with deep potential for character growth and customization, before I got to the questions I always ask.

Among the first things he noted was that he liked the speed. It was fast to get into, and combat was concise and done in a few minutes. For me, that meant that if this game was intended to be a long adventure for gamers with short attention spans, I was close to threading that needle.

On the critical side, he noted that some of the game design that went into the goblins we fought felt a little unfinished and less than impactful. This was not a surprise to me; for all the work that I’ve put into figuring out the broad strokes of Disco Candybar, the enemies right now are mostly just targets to aim weapons at. They have some pushback, and the demo fight isn’t completely without tension, but those back-of-the-pack goblins really could use some love and attention when the next round of prototype updates goes up.

That said, one of the elements of the game I’m most proud of is its scalability. I’ve found a way to make the enemy lineups responsive to the player count and depth of experience, and Friday’s demo showed off exactly that. There’s a semi-randomized difficulty range that flexes from game to game, and we got dealt the harder end of that range for our playthrough. Frankly, I’m really glad the Goblins showed up the way they did, because even with some underwhelming abilities, it made the stakes feel more pressing. And while I don’t necessarily want a novice player’s experience with Disco Candybar to be a white-knuckle nail biter, that was probably a perfect way to demo it for Mathew.

I haven’t been asking players to give scores to the different aspects of the game (usually I condense it to something my wife calls “High/Low/Buffalo”, described in Playtest at the Disco), but Mathew went right to X-out-of-10 to summarize his thoughts.

Accessibility: 8 out of 10. He saw a system that players could ease into at the start of the game without much intimidation, and that could grow into something more complex as chapters progressed. Seeing just a segment of the game, it didn’t have the depth he’d be looking for right away, but for the right audience it was probably pretty close to the mark.

Fun: 7 out of 10, with room for improvement as the complexity and depth ramp up. And as I’d mentioned at the top of this post, Mathew LOVES story. I have almost none of that built into the game prototype. There’s a lot of “it’ll have this kind of narrative before, between, and after the combat pieces”, but I haven’t actually written any of that yet. I mean, right now the prototype is just the combat engine. I suspect with some actual narrative bits to set a more immersive scene, Disco Candybar would have gotten an extra point or point-and-a-half.

Vision for Growth: 8. He really liked how many dials the system has that can be turned to create new kinds of in-game experiences. Character growth is (planned to be) a big part of the game, and he rattled off a bunch of possible directions he could imagine the players getting to customize their characters as the game went on. Just about everything he suggested was completely in line with my vision. So the potential for growth in the scope of the game is clearly there.

So far, a 23 out of possible 30. Not the strongest score I could have wished for, but this is still a very unfinished prototype we’re talking about. This was not even “here’s the product built out to demonstrate the first chapter of our journey,” it was literally just the first fight, plus notes on where I’d like to see it all go. I’ll definitely be bringing this back to him after more revisions to make sure it’s improving steadily.

But the point Mathew made most expressively was that the story has to be good. Sure, the first chapter needs to be simple; we don’t need to jump straight to the epic-ness of it all — that would be daunting and intimidating — but we need to get there in time. I agree with him completely. It’s not my strength, so I’ll eventually be looking to some mentors like Mathew to help me build my outlines and branched path. For now I need to build enough quick combat scenarios that I can string together to approximate a “first chapter”. I’ll need to figure out what the end picture looks like soon though.

Adding that to the punchlist…

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